


thank you, jesus (you saved my fuckin' life)

by firepowder



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Tales From The SMP - Fandom, The Lost City of Mizu - Fandom, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Episode: e004 The Lost City of Mizu, Gen, God Complex, Idolization, Immortal Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Introspection, Non-Human Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Nonbinary Ranbob, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Other, Reflection, Touch-Starved, Unhealthy Relationships, Web Series: Tales from the SMP, apparently ao3 doesn't recognize ranbob as not-ranboo, get the fuck out., if you're here bc you're looking for ranboo/dream, wilbur wanted to be dream's vassal soooo bad. pack it up you'll never be ranbob
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:40:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29071923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firepowder/pseuds/firepowder
Summary: Dream is exactly what Ranbob knew he would be. But although they know everything about him, he's a stranger to them. Alone under the domes of glass, they can't ignore the conflicts rising between them, but they can try.
Relationships: Ranbob & Dream, Ranbob/Dream, ranbob (tales from the smp)/dream
Comments: 12
Kudos: 146





	thank you, jesus (you saved my fuckin' life)

**Author's Note:**

> so I was thinking about ranbob and I was like. damn this mf has spent their whole life in presumably isolation, poring over these books to please their idol dream. kinda like a parasocial relationship, where they'd have learned everything they can about him and feel like they know him better than anyone else, but if they were to spend time together they'd actually be strangers. and there's obviously the power imbalance, but Mizu is set so far in the future that at this point, wouldn't dream be tired of manipulating everything? so here we have a tired god and his worshipper.
> 
> title from american idiot (musical)

Dream is nothing like Ranbob expected; confusingly, he was everything they knew he would be.

They knew he would be a person, like any other. Logically, if you had asked them in isolation whether they thought Dream would breathe, they would say yes. Of course they knew Dream would be a living, breathing person. Just like any other.

But Dream came as a surprise to them - and whether this was because they just don't have experience with other people, or because (and this was an ugly thought) they simply didn't know him as well as they had thought, his unfamiliarity is a scary thing. They've dedicated their life to learning him, poring over texts and piecing together references to create as much of a picture of him as they could, and then learning this picture by heart. They could rattle him off in their sleep: the first-known person here, the builder of the Communy House, the first casualty of the Disc Wars, lime-green and elusive, said to be a fast runner, hundreds of pages' worth of information they knew of him. But still he is a stranger, sitting in their cafeteria.

Dream, for his part, is out of his depth. Not that he's not content to sit here at the bottom of the ocean for the foreseeable future - he's got nowhere else to be, these days.

But after the initial curiosity had worn off, after he'd seen every room and half-read most of the books, after he got used to the place, there's nothing for him to do. Nothing to control. And sometimes this is delightful to him, a long-forgotten joy. It's like excitement, but inverse, to sit here and let Ranbob putter about and show him around and tell him things and do things of their own volition. He doesn't tell them what to do and they do things anyway, and he doesn't need to predict their goals because they don't matter. It's so refreshing to have company, and to not be in control of them.

Sometimes, though, he misses feeling powerful, misses the satisfaction of things happening the way you want them to. When he voices this, that his environment not needing his hand feels unfamiliar or even frustrating at times, Ranbob offers to let him control them.

The offer is so deeply unthinkable, he can't even speak.

He politely declines the offer to take control. He's not sure if Ranbob meant just verbally telling them what to do, or twisting their mind and values to give him something he wants, or what. But whatever they meant, even though he had just a minute ago been complaining about how annoying it was that there was nothing to control, the suggestion twisted his gut. It has been a long time since he was behind a scene, but he realizes now that he doesn't want to be anymore, now that he's finally able to afford sitting back. The prospect of holding someone's strings in his hands is a heavy one, now that he's let himself relax.

Ranbob accepts his polite declining of their offer. They've disappointed him, and aren't fit to carry out his will. They should have known better. They resolve to improve, and maybe one day in the future be better.

Dream knows it's not the healthiest relationship, but he gave up on healthy relationships a long time ago. He's been on the unhealthy streak for so long, in fact, that he's fucking bored. He already knows he can play anyone to do anything, if he tries. He's already played so many games and manipulated so many ways. He knows where all the paths go, and it's not only boring, it's a lot of fucking work. So it's nice to breathe here, the cold, musty Mizu air under the domes, and let Ranbob talk about anything they choose to talk about. It's nice not having a goal in mind and just existing. Sometimes, he even listens.

Mizu is cold, under the weight of the sea. Ranbob freezes at night so they don't have to feel it. They turn off their brain and sink into stillness and force their body into unconsciousness.

They used to sleep unfrozen, like normal people do, drifting off and even having dreams sometimes. But recently - a few years ago, maybe - Mizu's infrastructure, always degrading, stopped providing heat all the time, so they turn it off at night to save it for the daytime. It's much too cold to stay conscious-asleep, normal-asleep, then, so Ranbob fell into the pattern of going stock-still at night to conserve heat and to not have to experience the cold night hours.

Now that they have company, it dawns on them quickly that their routine no longer works. Dream, though not human, is constantly in motion, breathing or thinking or flapping his hands, and the microscopic disturbance, the tiny breeze this sends through Mizu's air, is enough to keep Ranbob teetering listlessly on the edge of stillness.

Put simply, they can't sleep.

Well, they haven't tried sleep. But they can't shut their functions off now, because every few minutes Dream blinks, or snores, or his heart beats, and the tiny change is unnerving and they can't get used to them after all these years of being alone. They're half-frozen, right on the line of inanimance, and the silent crashing of waves far above them sends icy aches through their limbs. Despite their best efforts, they can still think, and they're unbearably aware of the cold. Part of them, a very small part, registers the ability to seek out another person. But it's quickly brushed aside, the very idea of asking to approach Dream bringing the taste of bile to their mouth in shame. They wouldn't dare disrespect him like that. He hasn't said a word against it, but they wouldn't dare to assume that level of familiarity.

Hours of silence pass. They are rigid in their room, almost but not quite unconscious, still animate despite their effort. Eventually, Dream himself changes the circumstance. He wanders into their room, paging through a history book absently; they don't look to him but his closeness is like permission, and subconsciously they warm just enough to breathe again. They don't wake up and greet him, though some part knows they should, should apologize for their impropriety. They're just so tired, and for the first time in a very long time, they fall asleep with their heart beating and their body relaxed.

Dream doesn't usually finish reading the books. At some point, the handwriting goes unfamiliar, or he gets to a story he doesn't want to be told, or he just gets impatient. Today he's about two-thirds through a volume, though, and Ranbob feels a spark of pride in their chest on their ancestor's behalf, to be indirectly told their work was good.

"This history isn't right," Dream notes. Ranbob takes a few steps towards him to see what he's reading. As they move, they press out the spark in their chest.

"That's to be expected, I suppose," Ranbob says lightly. Their family had taken their lives' work to painstakingly record events as they happened, as accurately as they could, working to leave a reliable record for generations to come. They don't mention this to Dream. His dismissal sinks into their chest like a dead crab outside the glass, bitter and rough as Dream tells them what really happened, and they know it's irrational to feel insulted by his honesty.

So they don't. They don't acknowledge the rotting sensation behind their sternum. They just nod and write down the differences on a spare paper.

And they don't copy down the revision into the books. That's their family's history, their whole work, hundreds of years in the making, for them and anyone who could come after. They can't just take a pen and edit it for the dead. How disrespectful that would be of them, correcting their ancestors' knowledge.

They don't entertain the thought that wonders, if acknowledging the new story told would be disrespectful of Ranbob, what does it make the teller of the story?

Ranbob doesn't seek affection or clarity. They don't ask anything of Dream. They only take what they are given, and give what they have. They don't presume to ask what they are, or how Dream thinks of them.

They tried to kiss him, at first. They tried to approach him, to get as close as they could to him, so close they could see every inch and more of him, so close they could finally, truly, fully know him. They reached to him with an iron sort of desperation, wanting nothing but to learn him all the way. Learn everything there was to know of him. How much they could write of him if they were allowed this, how many prayers and pseudo-songs penned, how contemplative the odes they could write could be-

Apparently, you aren't meant to kiss someone when you first meet them, even if you already know them like you know how to count, memorized. Apparently, that was awkward, Dream said. They're glad he said only awkward.

It doesn't feel right to curl up to their idol, to whom they have dedicated their entire life and yet is still sharply unfamiliar. Him being a real person is so unprepared for. And it feels wrong to ask to be bestowed closeness when they haven't learned him as well as they had prided themself upon.

Dream is, in fact, an entire person. Ranbob has prepared for him their whole life; essays and analyses and lists of traits, musings and dedications and stories cross-referenced for any trace of him they might hold, all so that they could know Dream better. And yet, Ranbob feels a stranger to him. They know him well - of course they know him well, they had writ enough to have a lifetime's worth, volumes on his behaviors and his history, when they forgot all else their knowledge of him could be relied upon - and yet.

They knew his favorite color, they had analyzed many times over the way he chose his words, they knew the curvature of the mask's smile. But the way he moved was a stranger to them. The way he breathed and spoke out loud, the way he tapped his fingers. There was nothing in their anthologies relevant that they could fall back on, for the first time not knowing something of Dream.

But after all these years of worship, of examination and idolatry, here Dream was, a person like any other who had ever lived here. A person with his arm around their shoulders, talking to himself.

And Ranbob knew they ought to be paying attention, ought to remember and record every impermanent word that fell from their idol's mouth. But the warm weight of his hand on their shoulder blade, and the delicate rumble of his chest, were too inviting, after hundreds and hundreds of years, or who knows how long, alone under the impassive weight of the dark water above. So despite the strange newness, and despite the dutiful sense of guilt pinging at their mind, they let themself curl deeper against Dream's chest and close their eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> at some point i might write more on this - there's something to say about loving someone and realizing they're just like you and realizing you can be loved too, or maybe they can't be loved. and something about learning to differentiate between your perception of someone and who they are. and theoretically there could absolutely be some horny shit with like worship/religion kinks and imagery or smth. but this is it for now.  
> follow me on tumblr lol. firepowder.tumblr.com


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